Peru Proposes Default Internet Censorship Requiring Opt-in To View Pornography

Techdirt has run a number of posts about David Cameron's dangerous plans to apply default online censorship and make porn opt-in in the UK, supposedly to "protect the children". Now it looks like Peru is following suit (original in Spanish): 

On Techdirt.

Another Problem with UK's 'Nudge Censorship': No Clear Accountability

As Tim Cushing has noted, David Cameron's half-baked plan to make online pornography opt-in in the UK has continued to earn him ridicule around the world. Despite that fact, there is already talk about extending this censorship approach to a host of other completely legal areas. The UK Open Rights Group (ORG), which discovered that slide into general censorship, not just of porn, has published another post which points out a further reason why what they call "nudge censorship" -- using default blocks that require a conscious opt-in to remove -- is so dangerous: the lack of clear accountability: 

On Techdirt.

MPs' Expenses Not Secret - Yet...

Looks like a reprieve more than a pardon:

Gordon Brown today retreated from plans to exempt MPs expenses from the Freedom of Information Act.

The surprise announcement made during prime ministers questions follows the collapse overnight of a bipartisan agreement between Brown and David Cameron, the Tory leader.

...


Brown told MPs: "We thought we had agreement from the parties and we will continue to have discussions with all parties until we have agreement."

Still, maybe shows that writing to MPs has *some* effect.

Open Source and UK Politics

The new dividing line between Labour and the Tories is less about a left-right split than about an authoritarian approach on one side and a more liberal one on the other. And Labour are on the wrong side of it. Many of their social and economic policies may have failed, but where they have succeeded is in developing a targeting, controlling, distrustful state. From the micromanagement of civil servants, teachers, doctors and the police, to ID cards, super databases and the growth of surveillance, the government's answer to too many problems has been the removal of autonomy from individuals and more oversight from Whitehall.

The Conservative analysis is that this over-controlling state is not only disastrously unpopular, it is also one of the key reasons why Labour, despite all its spending, has failed to achieve its goals. Endless supervision has been an expensive distraction, and has sapped energy and morale out of public life.

Amazing how the Conservatives are becoming the party of bottom-up openness - explicitly in the case of open source - and Labour seems determined to become its polar opposite.

Greenies Go Open

Pretty much a marriage made in heaven:

Open source software should be more widely available in order to help reduce the 'digital divide', according to Dr Caroline Lucas, Green MEP for the South East.

Dr Lucas has added her signature to a written declaration in the European Parliament - like an Early Day Motion (EDM) in the House of Commons - recognising the growing disparities in access to information and communication technologies throughout the European Union, and calling for increased use of open source technology.

She said: "The establishment of a digital divide is a new cause of social disparity which risks further excluding populations that are already vulnerable.

"New digital technologies have become an essential tool in all areas of life, including employment, education, and in personal leisure activities.

"European citizens have the right to freely access documents and information from the institutions which represent them, and it is about time that the use of open source software became more widespread.

"The European Union should take the necessary measures to help finance public research on open source software, and Parliament to switch its whole computer network to this type of technology.

Not that this is really a party issue: open source makes sense whatever your political persuasion, as David Cameron's increasing enthusiasm for it shows. Strange that only Labour doesn't get it: perhaps it's just too antithetical to its Stalinist positions on interception, internment without trial, ID cards, DNA databases et al.

You Know Open Source Has Really Arrived...

...when the two main political parties in the UK are squabbling over who is truer to the open source spirit:

David Cameron embraced Linux, open source and bottoms-up decision-making today as he detailed his vision of a Tory innovation policy in a speech at the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts.

Cameron pledged that a Tory government would set the UK’s data free – but not in a bad way, like HMRC. Rather, he said, he wanted to ensure people could access information which allowed them to create “innovative applications that serve the public benefit”. This “information liberation” meant ensuring spending data was transparent for example, and that people could easily compare crime figures.

At the same time, he said, “We also want to see how open source methods can help overcome the massive problems in government IT programs”. Cameron said the Tories would reject Labour’s addiction to the mainframe model. Instead, he claimed, a Conservative government would follow private sector best practice and introduce open standards, “that enables IT contracts to be split up into modular components”.

...


Cameron’s pledge to open source comes just days after the minister for transformational government, Tom Watson, claimed that Labour is the party that really, you know, gets open source.

In his speech on Monday announcing the government’s Power of Information taskforce, he referred to an earlier speech where “I talked about the three rules of open source - one, nobody owns it. Two, everybody uses it. And three, anyone can improve it." He then recounted how the Tories immediately sent out an email “laying claim that in fact they are the ‘owners’ of these new ideas. I was accused of plundering policies from the Conservatives.”

Fight, fight, fight.

How Daft Can You Get?

Let me count the ways:

David Cameron has pledged to extend copyright on music to 70 years - in exchange for an effort by music bosses to curb violent music and imagery.

What on earth has one got to do with the other? How will "music bosses" "curb" this stuff? What happens if they "curb" only some of it? Or if only some of them curb it? Do they all get an extension to 63 and a bit years? Or do some get any extension to 70, but the others not? Talk about hare-brained....